‘Trolls have nothing to do with religion’: Leena Manimekalai amid Kaali row

Leena Manimekalai, who has been at the receiving end of severe backlash and trolling for her latest documentary Kaali, has reacted to the row and said that she “does not feel safe anywhere at the moment”. “It feels like the whole nation that has now deteriorated from the largest democracy to the largest hate machine wants to censor me. I do not feel safe anywhere at this moment,” Manimekalai wrote on social media, while tagging The Guardian and sharing an interview she has given to the British newspaper.
The documentary, Kaali, was set to premiere in Canada’s Aga Khan Museum, as part of its ‘Under the Tent’ project. On July 2, Leena Manimekalai had shared the film’s poster, which depicted the Hindu goddess smoking a cigarette and holding an LGBTQIA+ flag. The poster triggered outrage from right-wing organisations and leaders, who said that the poster hurt their religious sentiments. The Indian High Commission in Ottawa issued a statement urging the Canadian authorities to take down all “provocative material” related to the film after it received complaints from leaders of the Hindu community in this country about the “disrespectful depiction of Hindu gods” on the poster of the documentary showcased.
In response, the Aga Khan museum announced that the documentary is no longer being shown as a part of the project and issued an apology for hurting Hindu sentiments. The statement said that the Toronto Metropolitan University brought together works from students of diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds, with each student exploring their individual sense of belonging as part of Canadian multiculturalism for the project ‘Under the Tent.’ 
Speaking to Guardian, Leena revealed that since the controversy began last week,  Manimekalai, her family and collaborators have received threats from more than 200,000 accounts online. The Toronto-based director described the online vitriol as a “grand-scale mass lynching” by rightwing Hindu groups.
She also dismissed claims that her film is disrespectful to the goddess or to Hinduism. She said she had been raised as a Hindu in Tamil Nadu but is now an atheist. “In Tamil Nadu, the state I come from, Kaali is believed to be a pagan goddess. She eats meat cooked in goat’s blood, drinks arrack, smokes beedi (cigarettes) and dances wild, that is the Kaali I had embodied for the film,” she said. She added, “I have all rights to take back my culture, traditions and texts from the fundamentalist elements. These trolls have nothing to do with religion or faith.
Two separate FIRs have been registered against Manimekalai in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh. On Wednesday, two additional cases were filed against her in Bhopal and Ratlam. Leena Manimekalai is not the only one to face police cases following the controversy. FIRs have also been filed against Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra for allegedly hurting religious feelings with her comments about the goddess.
On Monday, when asked about the controversy over the Kaali poster,  Mahua Moitra said she has every right as “an individual to imagine Goddess Kali as a meat-eating and alcohol-accepting goddess”. Every person has the right to worship gods and goddesses in his or her own way, she said.
Twitter has pulled down Leena  Manimekalai’s tweet from last week in which she shared the poster of the documentary. It was replaced by a message from Twitter that read, “This Tweet from @LeenaManimekali has been withheld in India in response to a legal demand.”
Read: TN cops arrest right-wing group leader for death threats to Leena Manimekalai
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